Appeal set in asbestos death award
Attorneys for Fisher Controls International, a supplier of industrial control products, will appeal a Buffalo jury’s $2.25 million award to the family of a former Hooker Chemical worker whose death has been attributed to cancer caused by exposure to asbestos in the workplace, a company spokesman said Thursday.
David Baldridge, a spokesman for the Emerson Electric Co. subsidiary, said attorneys for the company “expect complete vindication as the case moves forward” through the higher courts.
After a six-week trial before State Supreme Court Justice John P. Lane, a Buffalo jury of four men and two woman this week ordered St. Louis-based Fisher Controls to pay the estate of the late Ronald Drabczyk of Niagara Falls for his 2005 death from mesothelioma.
The jury award included $750,000 in punitive damages for the asbestos Drabczyk family lawyers proved was in the Fisher valves Drabczyk regularly repaired at the old Hooker Chemical plant in Niagara Falls.
Though Baldridge contended Fisher “had no knowledge” its products “could pose any harm,” Jordan Fox, the lead attorney for the Drabczyk family, stressed that “the jury found they did not comply with the law and created a wanton and reckless danger” for Drabczyk and other Hooker workers.
Fox, contacted at his New York City office, confirmed Baldridge’s claims that other companies sued by the Drabczyks had settled their claims before trial, but he said those settlements were confidential.
Fox also confirmed that the Buffalo jury found Fisher Controls to be only 5 percent at fault for the mesothelioma that caused Drabczyk’s death, but under New York Law it is liable for the full jury verdict. Drabczyk died Nov. 29, 2005, at age 70.
Baldridge, speaking for Fisher Controls, said that “decades ago when the valves in question were manufactured, Fisher had no knowledge that those valves could pose any harm.”
He said Hooker Chemical officials “had specifically ordered the valves to contain asbestos and Fisher is not an asbestos supplier and filled the order to the employer’s specifications.”
Baldridge said Fisher Controls did not work out a pretrial settlement with the Drabczyk family “because it always complied with all the law and was, and remains, the leader in the world in valve safety.”
Fox said he is confidant the trial before Lane was “fair and the jury verdict was correct as to the facts and the law.”
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